The past few episodes we’ve been featuring interviews and snippets from show that were at this year’s Los Angeles Podcast Festival October 4-6. There are still MORE to get to but this episode we’re taking a little bit of a break from the PodFest. (I do feature one clip from the festival from Girl On Guy's live appearance.)
The main focus of Epi73 is my revisit and interview with the comedy and independent movie production team of Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine.
We last spoke with them when they were doing a Kickstarter campaign for their comedy horror movie called The Selling. The movie ended up doing well for an crowdfunded indie production – it played in movie festivals around the US, got a limited theatrical release and is now out on DVD or you can rent it online through places like Amazon.com. (HINT: Use the Amazon banner at the top of our homesite to find The Selling - that way, Succotash gets a taste, too!)
Diani and Devine are now doing their most ambitious Kickstarter to date – trying to raise 100 grand! The campaign kicked off this past week and when I was in LA for the Podcast Festival, I got a chance to sit down with Gabe and Etta to find out about their new project.
Here’s the video from the Kickstarter site for their new project, called Diani & Devine Meet The Apocalypse…
I've sprinkled a couple of extra audio goodies from the campaign along the way during the interview. And I got to have Watson, one of the stars of the movie sit on my lap during our chat. I may never wash this lap again…
THE 10 MOST ACTIVE SHOWS IN THE STITCHER TOP 100 COMEDY PODCASTS LIST
This week there were a LOT of big numbers in the ST100CPL – here are the ones that did the most and by that I mean TRIPLE digit climbs, all UP the chart:
73. Harmontown +162
85. Straight Outta Lo Cash +159
89. Ronna & Beverly +162
91. Talkin’ Walking +166
92. Distorted View Daily +169
94. This Is That from CBC Radio +174
96. A Mediocre Time with Tom & Dan Show +170
97. Cluster F +209
98. That American Life +172
99. The Steven Brody Stevens Festival of Friendship +369
DURST
We've got our Burst O' Durst this episode with our Ambassador to the Middle, political comedian Will Durst (whose one-man show, Boomeraging, has been extended Tuesday nights through December 17th at the Marsh Theater in San Francisco.) This episode he talks about the glitchy Obamacare website.
CLIPS
Due to the length of the interview this episode, we light on clips, but there are still a couple to keep us honest…
Girl On Guy With Aisha Tyler
Recorded live at the LA Podcast Festival, our clip features part of Aisha Tyler's chat with her guest, The League's Nick Kroll. (And thanks to our Honorary Associate Producer Tyson Saner for slicing this one out - the guys been a lifesaver! If you'd like to hear some of Tyson's original music, BTW, you can hit up his page on Soundcloud…)
Take Me Home
Our other clip this episode was sent in by Tyler & Parker, the hosts of Take Me Home. The premise of the show is that they talk to comedians IN Los Angeles about their hometowns and growing up there but they get there by talking about what’s going on in the hometown news that week. In the clip they sent along, their guest is Brandt Tobler, who talks about how he helped himself ot over a million buck in merchandise from a department store in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
That's about it for Epi73. Seems short, right? No way. You're getting it with both barrels - this show runs over 120 minutes. More Succotash that you can shake a stick at - although shaking sticks at podcasts rarely results in anything.
Get out of here. And, until next time, please remember to pass the Succotash!
— Marc Hershon
It’s your ol’ pal, Marc Hershon, once again and I’ve got Epi72 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast right here for you. I don't spend a whole lot of time jabberin’ because — as usual —I’m WAY behind getting the episodes out.
And I have a healthy backlog of interviews from the 2nd Annual Podcast Festival from about 3 weeks ago now, which I can really only put these out one an episode AND still play clips from podcasts that were featured at PodFest.
In addition, I’m now running into a pipeline problem in that the pipeline is filling up with content. Non-podfest content. Which is a good problem to have, but it means I’m going to interrupt the podfest interviews later this week and put out a show featuring two filmmaker friends of mine – Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine – because they just popped the top on a Kickstarter campaign for the new comedy feature film they putting together. It’s called Diani And Devine Meet The Apocalypse and so next episode that chat will be our centerpiece.
After a bunch of clips are played, I have an interview with our Special Guest Shawn Merek. I got to know Shawn last year at the FIRST LA PodFest, when he was the producer for the PodCrash podcast with Chris Gore. He’s still producing for Chris but he’s also one of the guys helping to make all the shows go over at the Sideshow Network. Shawn popped into the Podcast Lab at the PodFest and we talked about him, his life as a producer and also where podcasting may be heading in the future.
OTHER THAN CLIPS
This episode, besides clips and the interview, we also have our Burst O' Durst with comedian Will Durst, a new song just in time for the upcoming holiday, A Stormtrooper for Halloween by John Anealio. John just released an EP with that song as the title track - one of four songs - that you can download for FREE at http://JohnAnealio.com (or you can also opt to kick John some dollars if you wish. WE did, but who are we to ask you for money?), and we also have a brand new Henderson's Pants commercial.
TOP 10 MOST ACTIVE PODCASTS IN THE STITCHER TOP 100 COMEDY PODCAST LIST
Exclusively from the Comedy Podcast Podcast, here's a list of the comedy podcasts that showed the most action - either up OR down the chart - from Stitcher's Top 100 Comedy Podcasts:
44. The Champs with Neal Brennan & Moshe Kasher +60
48. The Artie Lange Show +13
67. The Comedy Button +44
68. The Dead Authors Podcast +112
69. The Bone Zone +22
89. The Dana Gould Hour -32
94. Where’s My 40 Acres: Ratchet & Real +23
95. Thrilling Adventure Hour -13
97. Wits +12
99. Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show +31
(Anyone have tips on how to get your Stitcher numbers up? Succotash is at 5859 this week. Which is up a thousand or so from last week, but still...)
THE CLIPS
Inverse Delirium
I like to think it’s a measure of this show's success that my supporting players are getting more airtime in Podcast Land than I am. Just this past week, Geoffrey Welchman over at the Inverse Delirium podcast tapped both my booth announcer Bill Heywatt AND the host of our Burst O’ Durst feature, comedian Will Durst, to provide their voices for a couple of characters in a sketch!
Man School
Jumping back a few weeks to the LA PodFest, we have a clip from Caleb Bacon’s Man School podcast which was done live at the Fest. You may remember that Caleb was the host of the Gentlemen’s Club podcast but hung up his bouncer’s dud for a professor’s hat when he debuted Man School. In this clip, we hear him with guest Chris Gore and Jason Smith, with kind of a sports/cosplay mashup chat going on.
My Wife Hates Me
Tyson Saner - who continues to amaze me and delight you with his ability to send along multiple clips every week for this show - grabbed a clip from My Wife Hates Me with husband-and-wife comedians Rich Vos and Bonnie McFarlane, along with their guest (and past Succotash visitor) Andy Kindler.
But we’re not done with Rich Vos yet. While at the LA PodFest, he hopped over and guested on…
Road Stories with Murray Valeriano
Murray was performing his podcaast live and I guess Rich Vos doesn’t just have it tough at home – he shared a couple of road horror stories from working gigs on the road…
Story Worthy
I ran into Christine Blackburn from the Story Worthy podcast in the Podcast Lab at the Festival. She hung out for a little bit – long enough to record an ID for the show but not a real interview. She had to run off to do her show, where one of the guest spinning a tale was Pearl Aday, who talked about meeting and bowling with Michael Jackson when she was just 10 years old.
I Am Idiot
I was trying to keep the clips on this episode reined in to just Podcast Festival shows, but there’s just too much going on. I like to celeberate when podcasts hit their Episode 100 but this time it’s a bittersweet hurrah. Our friends Howard, Keith and Ben in England, the brains behind the I Am Idiot podcast just dropped their centennial epi but, at the same time, they’ve announced it will be their LAST episode as well. Bummer. I swapped a couple of tweets with them and I found out that they had always planned to put in 100 shows and then move on to something else. So here’s a taste of the Final Idiot…
Phil Hendrie's Hmm Mmmm with Bobby Dooley
Back to the LA Podcast Festival, where Phil Hendrie was on hand with Phil Hendrie’s Hmm Mmmm with Bobby Dooley, one of the better known characters from Phil’s long running radio show. I’ve heard Phil as a guest on a couple of podcasts and, although he’s still doing some radio, he is embracing the podcast model. Here he is, as Bobby Dooley and her husband occasionally, along with his guest and Podcast Festival co-organizer Graham Elwood.
The Science Jerks
Tyson Saner found us a two-fer! One of the live shows at the PodFest was Stuff You Should Know with Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant. But they haven’t dropped their festival episode yet. They did sit down with Dave Ciaccio and Robert Chan, hosts of The Science Jerks podcast, for an interview in the Podcast Lab. Funny enough, I saw this interview going down about 6 feet away from where the Succotash table was set up. The guys talk about the theft of Einstein’s brain.
Hope you don't mind that this show runs about an hour and a half with everything we've got going on. Once you've heard the clips, take some time out to go listen to these shows in their entirety. And, when you get done with that…don't forget to please pass the Succotash! i
— Marc Hershon
Marc Hershon here, back from last weekend’s rousing 2nd Annual Los Angeles Podcast Festival! And what a festival it was. Held once again at the Delfina Hotel in Santa Monica. There were tons of live podcasts going off during the three days – or, really, two and a half days – of the festival.
Looking back on the schedule for the PodFest, I count 40 shows and that’s not counting the folks like us that were recording our own shows and interviews in the Podcast Lab.
Speaking of which, the next couple of episodes of Succotash will hopefully come out very quickly. Bam, bam, bam. Because they’ll be focused around interviews I did while I was at the festival.
I’ll be playing clips from many of the episodes of the podcasts that were done at the festival as well.
A big shout out to our Honorary Associate Producer Tyson Saner, who's been doing an amazing amount of clip harvesting on behalf of this show.
I got to be a guest on Chillpak Hollywood Hour during their live appearance at the PodFest, and you'll hear not only hear a clip from that episode but also some chats I had in the Podcast Lab with Dean Haglund, Phil Leirness, and Lily Holleman - all three not only associated with Chillpak with the still-in-production film The Ladykillers as well.
The 10 Most Active Show In The Stitcher Top 100 Comedy Podcast List
This is the rundown of the ten shows on Stitcher's Top 100 Comedy Podcast list that have moved up or down the charts the most this past week.
37. The Smartest Man In The World +28
42. The Mark & Lynda Podcast -34
63. The Dana Gould Hour +44
64. This Week In Blackness Radio +15
65. The Tenderloins Podcast +98
68. DVDASA with David Choe & Asa Akira -32
78. Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine +48
79. SModcast >> FeAB -40
82. Answer Me This! +16
91. Who’s Paying Attention +15
The podcast at the top of the list - The Smartest Man In The World - is hosted by improv great and friend Greg Proops, who is also releasing a video special on October 22nd. Available online, you can find Greg Proops: Live at Musso & Frank at Chill.com.
The Clips
The Steven Brody Steven Festival of Friendship
Our friend Tyson Saner harvested this clip from The Steven Brody Stevens Festival of Friendship podcast and I’m glad. I really like Brody and hadn’t had a chance to even hear his podcast yet. Plus I also like James Adomian, who is an amazing vocal talent and funny as hell to boot. His “Maron in Space” bit on the IFC Channel is hilarious.
Doug Loves Movies
My first clip from one of the LA PodFest shows comes from Doug Loves Movies with Doug Benson – one of the few podcasts out of the 40 they had that I actually had the time to watch. The one this year wasn’t as crazy as last year’s, which was unhinged. (The RC helicopter nametag was back, but no sign of last year's infant…) He had Jimmy Pardo, Nick Thune, DC Pierson, and David Huntsberger on stage with him, but this clip is before the guests even came out, when Doug clears the air about Mr. Belvedere’s balls.
Improv 4 Humans
Matt Besser’s show was at the PodFest but THIS clip is from another live appearance that Tyson Saner grabbed. It’s from Bumbershoot in Seattle and Tyson says he liked this pull because it’s very “Hi, this is who we are and here we go!” Featuring Tim Meadows, Horatio Sanz & Brian Huskey, it’s also based around the Harold structure for you improv wonks, which lends itself pretty well to a podcast.
The Kira Soltanovich Show
Comedian Kira Soltanovich was all over the LA PodFest. Every time I turned around, there she was, either interviewing someone or being interviewed herself. She hasn’t really been on my radar until now, but I got to see her perform live at the late Saturday night Standup Smash! Show they did there and now I’m a fan. In this clip that Tyson grabbed, we hear part of Kira’s interview with Laraine Newman.
Just Jump To The End
It’s interesting to see how many siblings pop up as podcast hosts. One of the best ones is My Brother, My Brother and Me but there also the Sibling Rivalry podcast, the Kamenetsky Brothers Land O’ Lakers podcast and a whole bunch of other ones. One I just found out about is Jump To The End, featuring brother-sister team Scott Fitzman and Molly Harris. Their show’s Twitter page describes the p’cast as “Two grown siblings talking shit about people, places, and things.” In our clip they talk about revisiting cartoons and other entertainment from their childhood, and what it’s like exposing THEIR kids to it.
The Indoor Kids
Back to the LA PodFest, we get a taste of the live-in-front-of-a-live-audience version of The Indoor Kids. Hosted by the husband-and-wife team of comics Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, this show focuses on video games. In this segment from the Fest with Blair Butler, they talk about video games that they’ve recently been depressed by and, also, games that they use as a carthasis.
Chillpak Hollywood Hour
For the last taste of the LA PodFest this episode, I pull a few minutes from the live Chillpak Hollywood Hour show, featuring Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness, with their special cameo guest…ME!
So there will be more clips from LA PodFest shows in the next few episodes. After that (or maybe in between some of that), I will have interviews with some comedians and some filmmakers who are in the throes of getting their Kickstarter campaigns rolling.
Rest up.
In the meantime, don't forget to pass that damn Succotash.
— Marc Hershon
THE 10 MOST ACTIVE SHOWS IN THE STITCHER TOP 100 COMEDY PODCASTS LIST
